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22 March 2017

Shanghai Announces Food Safety Regulations

The Shanghai Food Safety Regulations recently promulgated by the Shanghai Food and Drug Administration took effect on 20 March 2017 (see details [embed link] in Chinese). Under these regulations, the strictest regulatory mechanism and legal responsibility system will be established to enforce the food safety requirements.

The new legislation was adopted by the Shanghai Municipal People’s Congress (SMPC) in January 2017 after being reviewed three times by the SMPC Standing Committee. It has been extended from the original six chapters to eight with the inclusion of new chapters on “Food Safety Risk Monitoring and Assessment and Food Safety Standards” and “Prevention and Handling of Food Safety Incidents”. The number of articles is increased from 62 to 115. The legislation fine-tunes the general provisions for market access, the principal responsibility of food producers and dealers, the regulation of edible agricultural products, and requirements for online food business.

The Regulations set strict market access thresholds to prevent substandard food from entering the market. Shanghai will improve the system of registration of food safety information on food and edible agricultural products entering Shanghai and establish a system of mutual notification between imported food safety information and regulatory departments. Information traceability is required for food and edible agricultural products that are key targets for supervision.

Shanghai will strengthen the standardised management of food production enterprises by putting into place the principal responsibility of enterprises at all levels of production and business operation. It will step up whole-process control for food safety and set higher requirements for the management of food that is approaching or has passed its best before date. It will also strictly regulate and make public the food processing procedures and implement the system of the quantified and classified management of food safety in catering service.

Shanghai will also regulate the record-filing obligations of third-party online food distribution platform providers as well as producers and dealers of food traded on their own websites, the public announcement system for online food dealers, the management responsibility of third-party online food distribution platform providers, and the requirements for delivery of online traded food.

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